Emotional Lockdown
by silvaesedai
Summary: Hisoka muses about his feelings... and apparent lack thereof. Another short oneshot.


**Emotional Lockdown**

_by silvaesedai_

_Credit where credit is due :_ Yami no Matsuei does not belong, of course, to me. So please don't sue me, 'cause the most I could give you would be the links to the fansubs on YouTube...

On another note, I was reading a review about Dorian Gray's _The Lie_ (a wonderful fic you should all go read as soon as you possibly can –go! go!) and someone expressed how realistically they felt Hisoka's emotional lockdown had been portrayed. So I found myself randomly typing this.

Though I know the themes are very close, this was not meant to copy Dorian Gray's work – I was afraid to sully even the idea with my crappy writing. This was, rather, _supposed_ to be Hisoka reflecting on the emotional lockdown itself. Oh well, I'm so sorry, Dorian. -- it's two in the morning, after all.

_2:54_

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Being around Tsuzuki is uncomfortable.

He laughs too loud and too often. He cries and he pleads and he flatters shamelessly and he has no pride or discretion.

He blushes sometimes when he looks at me, and through the thick veneer of love and affection I can feel something else. Something like what I felt from Muraki.

Desire.

Lust.

He shifts and he fidgets and I can hear the thought, the feeling that he has been trying to voice for the last few weeks.

I love you.

I already knew that, Tsuzuki.

What you mean is "I want you".

Because if you tell someone that you love them, it means that eventually you will kiss them and touch them and take them home to your apartment one night.

You will have rights to their heart, to their feelings. To their body.

But I can't find it within myself to fear you or to hate you for that. Or even to condemn you. You might want me, but you will not take me.

You might love me, but you don't pretend to understand me.

And you care.

Oh, the others care too. They see my eyes look particularly dull today, and they are concerned. They hear that last night I found myself crying in Tsuzuki's arms, _again_, and they go over quietly to ask him how I'm feeling.

You just… wait.

For such a loud and obnoxious idiot, you're surprisingly quiet when it comes to caring for me.

You almost said it, the other afternoon.

You were standing beside me under the sakura. The sakura that always blooms.

There is something vaguely sickening about that, don't you think? Even the Meifu mocks us, even the Meifu knows how broken we all are, how incapable of moving forward. And it yells it to our faces every day, with those insolently perfect, eternal cherry- blossoms.

You were standing beside me, and a petal fell down, brushing my cheek.

You plucked it from the air, and then you just stood there looking at me. Silent.

Hisoka, I…

_love you don't deserve you need you too love you want you am not worthy of you love you anyway_

…don't know if I ever told you how thankful I was for your keeping me here...

You finished quietly. Trailed off.

And inside me, something cringed and flailed useless fists against that dark prison that enclosed my feelings.

I've been reading about this.

It's called "emotional lockdown", with the usual poetry of the precise.

So that's exactly what it feels like. My feelings are captive, my thoughts clinical.

I've never had this before. Usually I was the one locked away. On the outside, looking in.

Now I'm finally on the inside, but I forgot a part of myself outside the barbed wire.

So I stay in here, and look without.

It says in the book from the library that emotional lockdown usually occurs in cases of trauma, past or present, that is yet to be confronted. That the symptoms of such a syndrome are lack of perception of one's feelings. A feeling of void.

Emotionlessness.

Idiocy. See, the word itself doesn't exist.

I wish it did.

Because whatever happens, I will never be emotionless.

Even though I still don't know whether or not I love Tsuzuki, whether or not I enjoy my life here, whether or not I care at all – even then, I'll still be annoyed that I lost my new hair-ribbon this morning, and nervous because I just turned half of my lab equipment back to carbon and Tatsumi is going to kill me slowly, and frustrated because we are short on funding again. And secretly glad, because Hisoka hasn't snapped at me yet today.

Emotionlessness.

What _would_ I feel, if I were given the space to?

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_03:15_

Review please... anything and everything will be welcomed.


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